Featured letter: Lack of doctor face time? That started with HMOs

This letter is in response to the April 25 letter about the Affordable Care Act: "Obamacare to blame for less time with doctors."

Let us turn the clock back a couple of decades when HMOs took over with the approval of Democratic and Republican legislators. Everyone was saying the same thing. Patients were upset about their standard of care. Doctors didn't like it either, and some talked about getting out of medicine and even medical school applications dropped.

The horror stories of HMOs were endless. Patients were dropped from their plans, forced to find different doctors, unable to obtain the medicines they needed, and physicians were underpaid. Let us not forget, many people were dropped by their insurers because they had illnesses. Hence, the "less time" concern has been around for a long while before Obamacare.

We are no longer living in the 1950s or '60s, when your doctor would sit and chat with you or even make a home visit, and why should they? Their day not only involves managing a practice, but also hospital care, meetings, continuing education and, yes, a personal life. If the doctor spends more time than necessary with a patient, all the other patients in the waiting room will be complaining.

Health care has changed again, and it is too soon to make a final judgment. Let us hope for the best, to see patients more satisfied, doctors receiving better reimbursements from the insurers and an increase in medical students and tuition breaks so we can have even better quality of care.

If everyone is to have health insurance, we need more doctors or it won't work.

Betty Taylor

Middletown

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Featured letter: Lack of doctor face time? That started with HMOs

This letter is in response to the April 25 letter about the Affordable Care Act: 'Obamacare to blame for less time with doctors.'

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